In recent years, the capabilities of and uses for mobile communication devices have greatly expanded as smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other types of advanced mobile communication devices have increased in popularity. While mobile communication devices have been used for voice calls and mobile messaging services (e.g., text messaging) for some years, the development of advanced messaging services (e.g., multimedia messaging) and data communication services (e.g., email and surfing the world wide web) have resulted in mobile communication devices being used for an increasingly wide variety of purposes. In many cases, today's users use some or all of the communication capabilities of a single mobile device for work, as well as to communicate with family, keep up with personal interest groups, engage in hobbies, store personal photographs and music, and other purposes.
For computers, individual user accounts provide multiple users the ability to share one computer while retaining the ability to store each individual user's data separately, to personalize the view and appearance of the user's desktop, and to install application programs for access and use only by one or more particular user accounts. User accounts on a computer, however, are linked to different users, such that each user has a single user account on the computer. In addition, while user account functionality is common on computers, such functionality has not transitioned to mobile communication devices at least in part because of limitations on storage space and processing power of mobile devices. User account functionality has also not transitioned to mobile communication devices because devices have traditionally been used by a single user, and devices have been used for limited types and numbers of purposes (e.g., to make and receive phone calls and text messages). Instead, mobile communication devices are configured for use by a single user, the user having access to all data and applications on the device once a general access password has been entered into the device. A need therefore exists for technology to enable a user to have multiple segmentation profiles on a mobile communication device, for example to allow the user to have separate profiles corresponding to different interests or purposes of the user and segment the user's data among the profiles.
Mobile communication devices are commonly used by users for both work and personal purposes, and two approaches have been developed to enable enterprise customers to maintain control of work-related data and applications on mobile communication devices. These approaches, however, are geared towards addressing security vulnerabilities in mobile devices that store or are configured for access to work-related email accounts or other work-related data or services. To address the security vulnerability, enterprises and their service providers have developed methods for remotely erasing all data from enterprise devices, for example when the devices are reported as being lost or stolen. Recognizing that mobile devices are commonly used for both work and personal purposes, however, enterprise users may not want to erase personal data from such devices. A server-based solution to this problem has been proposed for devices such as Blackberry devices. Enterprise users having a Blackberry Enterprise Server can use the server to classify enterprise and personal data and applications on mobile devices controlled by the enterprise, and to restrict access to the enterprise data and applications on the mobile devices. The solution, however, restricts classification to one of only two categories (i.e., work vs. non-work), cannot be initiated or configured by a user of the device, and requires a specialized server and communication with the server to classify data and enact access restrictions.
A second approach for allowing enterprise users to impose restrictions on mobile communication devices has been proposed. The second approach relies on a Mobile Virtualization Platform which runs two operating systems on the mobile device. A native operating system (OS) provides access to the device's built-in features, while a guest operating system contains the employee's work environment. Enterprise users may thus deploy a guest operating system platform on a user's device to provide access to enterprise data and applications, while retaining control of access restrictions on the enterprise data and applications running in the guest operating system. This second approach, however, is again limited to one of only two categories of data (i.e., work-related running on the guest OS, vs. non-work running on the native OS). Also, the second approach cannot be initiated or configured by a user of the device, and is computationally expensive by requiring dual operating systems on the mobile communication device, and separate applications running in each operating system. In addition, the virtualization platform approach requires a device with two phone numbers, such that data can be separately provided to each operating system.
Because of the shortcomings of existing approaches for separately categorizing work vs. non-work related content, a need exists to provide users of mobile communication devices with multiple profiles that are user-configurable and are implemented on the mobile communication device itself. In addition, the existing approaches are limited by being restricted to one of only two classification categories, by failing to enable a user to initiate and configure the classification categories and associated restrictions, and by requiring specialized servers and/or phone numbers to run. In addition, the existing approaches do not allow users to themselves restrict access to data or applications on a mobile device, for example to restrict access to personal data (e.g., family photographs) when the phone is being used for work purposes, or to segment and thereby organize a user's data according to the user's various interests, hobbies, social groups, or the like.
A need therefore exists to enable users to create and manage multiple profiles on a mobile communication device. A need exists for full user-control of the segmentation profiles, to enable users to customize each profile and select data and applications associated with each profile on the device. A need further exists to enable the automatic segmentation of data on a mobile communication device to be performed by the mobile device itself, for example when new data is received on the communication device.